it was magic. For him it
was the note of the Roman trumpet, _tuba mirum spargens sonum_, filling
all the hollow valley with its command, reverberated in dark places in
the far forest, and resonant in the old graveyards without the walls. In
his imagination he saw the earthen gates of the tombs broken open, and
the serried legion swarming to the eagles. Century by century they passed
by; they rose, dripping, from the river bed, they rose from the level,
their armor shone in the quiet orchard, they gathered in ranks and
companies from the cemetery, and as the trumpet sounded, the hill fort
above the town gave up its dead. By hundreds and thousands the ghostly
battle surged about the standard, behind the quaking mist, ready to march
against the moldering walls they had built so many years before.

He turned sharply; it was growing very dark, and he was afraid of missing
his way. At first the path led him by the verge of a wood; there was a
noise of rustling and murmuring from the trees as if they were taking
evil counsel together. A high hedge shut out the sight of the darkening
valley, and he stumbled on mechanically, without taking much note of the
turnings of the track, and when he came out from the wood shadow to the
open country, he stood for a moment quite bewildered and uncertain. A
dark wild twilight country lay before him, confused dim shapes of trees
near at hand, and a hollow below his feet, and the further hills and
woods were dimmer, and all the air was very still. Suddenly the darkness
about him glowed; a furnace fire had shot up on the mountain, and for a
moment the little world of the woodside and the steep hill shone in a
pale light, and he thought he saw his path beaten out in the turf before
him. The great flame sank down to a red glint of fire, and it led him on
down the ragged slope, his feet striking against ridges of ground, and
falling from beneath him at a sudden dip. The bramble bushes shot out
long prickly vines, amongst which he was entangled, and lower he was held
back by wet bubbling earth. He had descended into a dark and shady
valley, beset and tapestried with gloomy thickets; the weird wood noises
were the only sounds, strange, unutterable mutterings, dismal,
inarticulate. He pushed on in what he hoped was the right direction,
stumbling from stile to gate, peering through mist and shadow, and still
vainly seeking for any known landmark. Presently another sound broke upon
the grim air, the m